Keep Beer, Wine or Other Drinks Cold!

Introduction: Keep Beer, Wine or Other Drinks Cold!

***Please try this, add results/thoughts in the comments, and consider voting for this in the contests I've entered.

What I have come with will not only keep your beer or wine cold (or other beverage you don't want to put ice in), but (based on my studies, experiments, and empirical evidence) will MAKE...IT...COLDER!!!

You should be singing Glory, Glory, Hallelujah in your head at this point. I think you'll find my plastic cup hack on par with other great life-changing achievements of the human race such as the wheel, airplane, Internet, etc. It's cheap and easy, too! As far as I can tell from my searches, I'm the first to document this idea. Again, if you like it and find it useful, please consider voting for my Instructable in the contests I've entered. Cheers!!!

Step 1: The Idea and Supplies

My idea's inspiration came from the old trick of wrapping a bottled beverage with a wet paper towel before putting it in the freezer. This process can make the drink cold much faster. I decided to go a step further and dared to bend physics to my will. I suspect my idea will get more attention than such trivial things as the Human Genome Project, Higgs boson, or the discovery of water on Mars (my hack will make that Martian water nice and cold, though). So, here goes.

What you'll need:

- At least two plastic cups, such as red Solo or similar

- Paper Towel(s)

- Water

- Access to a freezer or ice chest w/ice

Step 2: Make It

- Take one plastic cup and put approximately 2 ounces of water in it.

- Take a paper towel, soak it with water then fold it so you can wrap it around the sides of the other cup, leaving about an inch uncovered at the top (it's okay to have some extra hanging of at the bottom).

- Place the towel wrapped cup snugly inside the other cup and place the cups in the freezer or ice chest w/ice

- Allow the water in the bottom of the cup and in the paper towel to freeze.

*Note: You can make several of these and stack them together, just ensure they are positioned somewhat upright so the water in the bottom doesn't leak out.

Step 3: Tests and Results

SCIENCE!!! (kinda)

This project is mainly for beer and perhaps wine since it's more accepted to put ice in other types of beverages to keep them cold; however, this can be used for any liquid you want to keep cold in a plastic cup. Plus, like I said before, based on my experiments, it can actually make things colder. My tests ran for 20 minutes. If you take longer than that to drink a beer, you deserve to have it warm.

Test 1 (Graph 1): My first test was completed indoors with the room at 75 degrees Fahrenheit. I used three different cup set-ups: Room temperature cup, a single cup that was placed in the freezer for two hours, and my dual cup set-up which had also been in the freezer for two hours. Three ounces of beer from a bottle that had been in my refrigerator for many days was poured into each cup. I used a digital thermometer to measure the temperatures at various increments of time. The "starting temp" was taken about 45 seconds after the beer was poured. It can be surmised that the temp of the beer when taken from the refrigerator was approximately 43 degrees Fahrenheit.

Results (Graph 1): As you can see from the graph, the temperatures rose steadily in the single cups, while the beer in my dual cup set-up was made colder and virtually maintained it's temperature at a chilly 33 degrees. At the 20 minute mark, the beer in the dual cup was much colder to the touch and was very noticeably colder when consumed. The other two were warm.

Test 2 (Graph 2): Experiment was the same as the first except it was conducted outside in 90 degree heat and 8 ounces of beer was placed in each cup. The single cup in the freezer was omitted from the test since, in Test 1, it wasn't much different than the room temp cup.

Results (Graph 2): Once again, the dual cup set-up made the beer colder. It did increase in temperature over 20 minutes, but at that point, it was still colder than where the beer started in the single cup and was the same temperature as the beer just taken from the fridge in the first test.

***UPDATE***: After publishing, I ran the first test again, thinking the fact I had the thermometer close to the bottom of the cup where the ice was might make the results too fantastic. This time, I held the thermometer toward the middle of a full pint. The beer started at 43 degrees, but one minute later, cooled to a temp of 36 degrees. It maintained that temp for approximately 20 minutes. Still very good results I think!!!

Step 4: Enjoy!

PLEASE try this for yourself. I think you'll be very happy with the results.

I don't see my original reply so here's another. This won't drip on your hand just holding it if the towel is nice and tucked in as shown. The ice melting in the bottom of the cup is the main concern, eventually. I used this cup set up yesterday and drank my beer with no issues until about the 45 minute mark. It was still nice and cold, but the ice in the bottom had thawed enough to where it got past the towel and a little water dribbled on my chin as I tossed back the last of the bitter nectar. So worth it.

Thanks bethmwl. Glad you like it. Have you tried it yet? I've used this set up about 10 times now and never had any drips. The towel keeps that from happening- make sure it's tucked in the other cup as shown. I suppose it would start dripping at some point, but not anywhere near the 20 minutes I used for testing.